Lunch tips from a true pro

Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall offers great tips for making lunches out of leftovers in his book, "River Cottage Every Day."

Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall offers great tips for making lunches out of leftovers in his book, "River Cottage Every Day." (Bill Hogan/Tribune photo)

Judy Hevrdejs, Tribune newspapers

Many people — and most cookbooks — skirt over the matter of workday lunches. Not Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

"For most of us these days, lunch is an irrelevance. Not so much because we don't eat it — we still generally manage to shovel some kind of calorific concoction into our mouths between the hours of noon and 2 p.m. No, the problem is that we scarcely notice that we're eating it. We devour our food on autopilot, barely savoring the taste and texture, as our brains continue to go over the day's workload."

So says Hugh. Admit it: It's a really sad state of affairs.

But who's Hugh and why should we care that he's all worked up over workday lunches?

Well, he's a Brit TV celeb chef, a cohort of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver. He's a dad of three and makes his wife's workday lunches from the family home in Dorset in southwest England, where he preaches the local-food gospel from the headquarters of his River Cottage food biz. He's written several books, including a James Beard Award winner (a food-world imprimatur).

Lunch Box is giving him a shout out because his book, "River Cottage Every Day" (Ten Speed Press), dedicates an entire chapter to "weekday lunch (box)" that's packed with good ideas.

"If you want to improve the quality of your working day," he writes in the chapter intro, "then improve the quality of your daily lunch."

With that, he offers 23 recipes, variations and tips, including frittatas, slaws (cabbage and beet, carrot and celery), hummus (beet and walnut), pasties and pestos. A number of recipes are based on leftovers.

A chicken, green bean and almond salad (pictured) tosses leftover cooked chicken pieces and green beans with toasted almonds and a garlicky vinaigrette sweetened with a bit of honey. Don't have green beans? Toss the chicken with couscous, honey and cinnamon, he suggests.